inside
pocket. The girls saw it and knew what was troubling him, but not a
word was spoken now between the three. They set off for home
self-consciously, Tommy the least agitated on the whole, because he need
not make up his mind for another ten minutes. But he wished Grizel would
not look at him sideways and then rock her arms in irritation. They
passed many merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a
tortuous course, for the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the
Southron in the other extremity, and thus between them could be
constructed a man wholly sober and another as drunk as Chloe. But though
the highway clattered with many feet, not a soul was in the double
dykes, and at the easy end of that formidable path Grizel came to a
determined stop.

"Good-night," she said, with such a disdainful glance at Tommy.

He had not made up his mind yet, but he saw that it must be done now,
and to take a decisive step was always agony to him, though once taken
it ceased to trouble. To dodge it for another moment he said, weakly:
"Let's--let's sit down a whiley on the dyke."

But Grizel, while coveting the packet, because she had never got a
present in her life, would not shilly-shally.

"Are you to give it to Elspeth?" she asked, with the horrid directness
that is so trying to an intellect like Tommy's.

"N-no," he said.

"To Grizel?" cried Elspeth.

"N-no," he said again.

It was an undignified moment for a great boy, but the providence that
watched over Tommy until it tired of him came to his aid in the nick of
time. It took the form of the Painted Lady, who appeared suddenly out of
the gloom of the Double Dykes. Two of the children jumped, and the third
clenched her little fists to defend her mamma if Tommy cast a word at
her. But he did not; his mouth remained foolishly open. The Painted Lady
had been talking cheerfully to herself, but she drew back
apprehensively, with a look of appeal on her face, and then--and then
Tommy "saw a way." He handed her the gold packet, "It's to you," he
said, "it's--it's your Muckley!"

For a moment she was afraid to take it, but when she knew that this
sweet boy's gift was genuine, she fondled it and was greatly flattered,
and dropped him the quaintest courtesy and then looked defiantly at
Grizel. But Grizel did not take it from her. Instead, she flung her arms
impulsively round Tommy's neck, she was so glad, glad, glad.

As Tommy and Elspeth walked away to their home, Elspeth could hear him
breathing heavily, and occasionally he gave her a furtive glance.

"Grizel needna have done that," she said, sharply.

"No," replied Tommy.

"But it was noble of you," she continued, squeezing his hand, "to give
it to the Painted Lady. Did you mean to give it to her a' the time?"

"Oh, Elspeth!"

"But did you?"

"Oh, Elspeth!"

"That's no you greeting, is it?" she asked, softly.

"I'm near the greeting," he said truthfully, "but I'm no sure what
about." His sympathy was so easily aroused that he sometimes cried
without exactly knowing why.

"It's because you're so good," Elspeth told him; but presently she said,
with a complete change of voice, "No, Grizel needna have done that."

"It was a shameful thing to do," Tommy agreed, shaking his head. "But
she did it!" he added triumphantly; "you saw her do it, Elspeth!"

"But you didna like it?" Elspeth asked, in terror.

"No, of course I didna like it, but--"

"But what, Tommy?"

"But I liked her to like it," he admitted, and by and by he began to
laugh hysterically. "I'm no sure what I'm laughing at," he said, "but I
think it's at mysel'." He may have laughed at himself before, but this
Muckley is memorable as the occasion on which he first caught himself
doing it. The joke grew with the years, until sometimes he laughed in
his most emotional moments, suddenly seeing himself in his true light.
But it had become a bitter laugh by that time.

CHAPTER XIX

CORP IS BROUGHT TO HEEL--GRIZEL DEFIANT

Corp Shiach was a bare-footed colt of a boy, of ungainly build, with a
nose so thick and turned up that it was a certificate of character, and
his hands were covered with warts, which he had a trick of biting till
they bled. Then he rubbed them on his trousers, which were the
picturesque part of him, for he was at present "serving" to the masons
(he had "earned his keep" since long before he could remember), and so
wore the white or yellow ducks which the dust of the quarry stains a
rarer orange color than is known elsewhere. The orange of the masons'
trousers, the blue of the hearthstones, these are the most beautiful
colors to be seen in Thrums, though of course Corp was unaware of it. He
was really very good-natured, and only used his fists freely because of
imagination he had none, and thinking made him sweat, and consequently
the simplest way of proving his case was to say, "I'll fight you." What
might have been the issue of a conflict between him and Shovel was a
problem for Tommy to puzzle over. Shovel was as quick as Corp was
deliberate, and would have danced round him, putting in unexpected
ones, but if he had remained just one moment too long within Corp's
reach--

They nicknamed him Corp because he took fits, when he lay like one dead.
He was proud of his fits, was Corp, but they were a bother to him, too,
because he could make so little of them. They interested doctors and
other carriage folk, who came to his aunt's house to put their fingers
into him, and gave him sixpence, and would have given him more, but when
they pressed him to tell them what he remembered about his fits, he
could only answer dejectedly, "Not a damned thing."

"You might as well no have them ava," his wrathful aunt, with whom he
lived, would say, and she thrashed him until his size forbade it.

Soon after the Muckley came word that the Lady of the Spittal was to be
brought to see Corp by Mr. Ogilvy, the school-master of Glen Quharity,
and at first Corp boasted of it, but as the appointed day drew near he
became uneasy.

"The worst o't," he said to anyone who would listen, "is that my auntie
is to be away frae hame, and so they'll put a' their questions to me."

The Haggerty-Taggertys and Birkie were so jealous that they said they
were glad _they_ never had fits, but Tommy made no such pretence.

"Oh, Corp, if I had thae fits of yours!" he exclaimed greedily.

"If they were mine to give awa'," replied Corp sullenly, "you could
have them and welcome." Grown meek in his trouble, he invited Tommy to
speak freely, with the result that his eyes were partially opened to the
superiority of that boy's attainments. Tommy told him a number of
interesting things to say to Mr. Ogilvy and the lady about his fits,
about how queer he felt just before they came on, and the visions he had
while he was lying stiff. But though the admiring Corp gave attentive
ear, he said hopelessly next day, "Not a dagont thing do I mind. When
they question me about my fits I'll just say I'm sometimes in them and
sometimes out o' them, and if they badger me more, I can aye kick."

Tommy gave him a look that meant, "Fits are just wasted on you," and
Corp replied with another that meant, "I ken they are." Then they
parted, one of them to reflect.

"Corp," he said excitedly, when next they met, "has Mr. Ogilvy or the
lady ever come to see you afore?"

They had not, and Corp was able to swear that they did not even know him
by sight.

"They dinna ken me either," said Tommy.

"What does that matter?" asked Corp, but Tommy was too full to speak. He
had "found a way."

The lady and Mr. Ogilvy found Corp such a success that the one gave him
a shilling and the other took down his reminiscences in a note-book. But
if you would hear of the rings of blue and white and yellow Corp saw,
and of the other extraordinary experiences he described himself as
having when in a fit, you need not search that note-book, for the page
has been torn out. Instead of making inquiries of Mr. Ogilvy, try any
other dominie in the district, Mr. Cathro, for instance, who delighted
to tell the tale. This of course was when it leaked out that Tommy had
personated Corp, by arrangement with the real Corp, who was listening in
rapture beneath the bed.

Tommy, who played his part so well that he came out of it in a daze, had
Corp at heel from that hour. He told him what a rogue he had been in
London, and Corp cried admiringly, "Oh, you deevil! oh, you queer little
deevil!" and sometimes it was Elspeth who was narrator, and then Tommy's
noble acts were the subject; but still Corp's comment was "Oh, the
deevil! oh, the queer little deevil!" Elspeth was flattered by his
hero-worship, but his language shocked her, and after consulting Miss
Ailie she advised him to count twenty when he felt an oath coming, at
the end of which exercise the desire to swear would have passed away.
Good-natured Corp willingly promised to try this, but he was never
hopeful, and as he explained to Tommy, after a failure, "It just made me
waur than ever, for when I had counted the twenty I said a big Damn,
thoughtful-like, and syne out jumpit three little damns, like as if the
first ane had cleckit in my mouth."

It was fortunate that Elspeth liked Corp on the whole, for during the
three years now to be rapidly passed over, Tommy took delight in his
society, though he never treated him as an equal; Corp indeed did not
expect that, and was humbly grateful for what he got. In summer, fishing
was their great diversion. They would set off as early as four in the
morning, fishing wands in hand, and scour the world for trout, plodding
home in the gloaming with stones in their fishing-basket to deceive
those who felt its weight. In the long winter nights they liked best to
listen to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into
writing, but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the
oddest of ways, as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his
hands to a fire when he found himself near one, though he might be
sweating to the shirt and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt,"
he told them, "as I do that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called
Buchan wi' the Haap after the wars was ower), had to hod so lang frae
the troopers, and them so greedy for him that he daredna crawl to a fire
once in an eight days."

The Lord of the Spittal and handsome Captain Body (whose being "out"
made all the women anxious) marched through the Den, flapping their
wings at the head of a fearsome retinue, and the Thrums folk looked so
glum at them that gay Captain Body said he should kiss every lass who
did not cheer for Charlie, and none cheered, but at the same time none
ran away. Few in Thrums cared a doit for Charlie, but some hung on
behind this troop till there was no turning back for them, and one of
these was Buchan. He forced his wife to give Captain Body a white rose
from her bush by the door, but a thorn in it pricked the gallant, and
the blood from his fingers fell on the bush, and from that year it grew
red roses.

"If you dinna believe me," Blinder said, "look if the roses is no red on
the bush at Pyotdykes, which was a split frae Buchan's, and speir
whether they're no named the blood rose."

"I believe you," Tommy would say breathlessly: "go on."

Captain Body was back in the Den by and by, but he had no thought of
preeing lasses' mouths now. His face was scratched and haggard and his
gay coat torn, and when he crawled to the Cuttle Well he caught some of
the water in his bonnet and mixed meal with it, stirring the precious
compound with his finger and using the loof of his hand as a spoon.
Every stick of furniture Buchan and the other Thrums rebels possessed
was seized by the government and rouped in the market-place of Thrums,
but few would bid against the late owners, for whom the things were
secretly bought back very cheaply.

To these and many similar stories Tommy listened open-mouthed, seeing
the scene far more vividly than the narrator, who became alarmed at his
quick, loud breathing, and advised him to forget them and go back to
his lessons. But his lessons never interested Tommy, and he would go
into the Den instead, and repeat Blinder's legends, with embellishments
which made them so real that Corp and Elspeth and Grizel were afraid to
look behind them lest the spectre of Captain Body should be standing
there, leaning on a ghostly sword.

At such times Elspeth kept a firm grip of Tommy's hand, but one evening
as they all ran panic-stricken from some imaginary alarm, she lost him
near the Cuttle Well, and then, as it seemed to her, the Den became
suddenly very dark and lonely. At first she thought she had it to
herself, but as she stole timidly along the pink path she heard voices,
and she cried "Tommy!" joyously.